Two sides of China’s policy in Xinjiang — and two sides of China’s president, Xi Jinping — have been on display during Mr. Xi’s visit to the tense western region, where he enthusiastically endorsed policies to integrate the Uighur ethnic minority while warning that his government would be unforgiving toward separatist violence.

[…] Photographs and television footage showed Mr. Xi as an amiable figure, chatting with Uighurs and officials around a table sporting baked flatbread and local snacks. They showed him smiling with a group of Uighur schoolchildren. They showed him wearing the distinctive, four-cornered “doppa” cap worn by many Uighur men. Yet they also showed Mr. Xi inspecting security troops in protective helmets and vests, and examining spears, clubs and other weapons.

[…] International human rights groups and advocates of Uighur self-determination argue that the Chinese government’s economic and social policies in Xinjiang have exacerbated tensions. They say that Uighurs feel increasingly insecure and dispossessed in Xinjiang, where they account for a little under half of the 22 million residents.

But during his visit, Mr. Xi indicated that he saw greater integration of Uighurs as a solution to discontent, not as its cause. The Chinese government sees the growing ethnic violence in Xinjiang as emanating from fanaticism sponsored from abroad, not from its own policy failures. Mr. Xi visited a bilingual school, where Uighur children were being taught in Mandarin as well as their own language. [Source]

China’s president has signaled aggressively in recent weeks that a central element of his leadership will be fighting those the government views as terrorists.

The government must “make terrorists like rats scurrying across a street, with everybody shouting “beat them!” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Xi as saying ahead of a recent trip to the at-times turbulent city of Kashgar.

[…] The Chinese government says growing violence in the region stems from separatists who want to divide Xinjiang from the rest of China and religious extremists, including those with ties to overseas terror groups. But Uighurs in Xinjiang and overseas activists groups say the issue is more complicated and stems partly from what many view as economic discrimination against ethnic Uighurs. [Source]